Are you familiar with Giphy? I heard an interview with the
CEO this week on NPR that was pretty lame. The CEO tried to be funny by just
sounded stupid. On the other hand, listening to his explanation of what Giphy
does gave me an idea. I happened to be talking about interpersonal communication
in my content marketing course and we were joking around about the apps “Yo”, “Bro”,
and “Beer.”
All these apps do is send an automated text with that
keyword to someone just to let you know you are thinking of them. You don’t really have anything to say, so a
quick “Yo” is all you need. But you don’t
feel lame about not adding text because the app doesn’t do that. It just sends the “Yo”.
We were joking around about it in class because this is a
pretty simple form of human communication and does serve an occasional need, it
isn’t something that my students thought would happen very often. Why have an app just for that. We brainstormed for a while for another word
that might be more explicit and more common.
Perhaps “Food” as a way to say “hey, let’s go get some
coffee/lunch/dinner/cocktails . . . .” or whatever.
On the other hand, the content at Giphy might be a great way
to achieve the same thing but with a lot more flexibility.
Giphy, as you might have guessed, is a repository of GIFs that
users can add to a text message, a social media post, or whatever else. One possible use for this is as a GIF-emoji
version of “Yo”. If you are thinking
about someone, you don’t “Yo” them or “Beer” them. But you also don’t have to think of something
interesting to say. You just pick a GIF that conveys whatever you are feeling
or just something funny and send it over.
No accompanying words required. It has a similar risk-reducing value to
it but with the ability to send all different kinds of messages. And people seem to love sharing GIFs.
So now to bring it over to content marketing. What if McDonalds created a GIF, available
for free download at Giphy, that conveyed the sentiment of “let’s go get something
to eat.” If it were a clear promotion of
McDonalds food, it would not be very popular, wouldn’t be a good investment for
McDonalds, and wouldn’t transform Giphy into a profitable company.
But that is also not what content marketing is about. To turn this into a great content marketing
platform, McDonalds would have to bring in some creative talent and design some
engaging and brand-independent GIFs that convey the sentiment and only have
subtle branding for McDonalds.
Think about the Kraft Food & Family magazine. It has good recipes for meals that happen to
involve cheese, but for which you could just as easily use Cabot as Kraft brand
cheese. Or Marriot’s new travel magazine that has great things to do in a city,
no matter what hotel you are staying at.
But these content marketing platforms do support the marketer’s brand
identity by establishing their credentials as an expert in food, travel, or
whatever.
Any marketer could take the same approach with Giphy. Create engaging GIFs with a very subtle branding message in the background. Users will download them and share them by the boatload. Everyone gets the subtle brand message, and without the concern from ad blockers or inattention blindness.
